MindHealth by Sara Stevens

Millions of years ago we lived completely on our instincts. No watches, phones, Google maps or Siri, back then. In fact, if we didn’t have our instincts we would never have made it to the 21st century, and in our world, we were not the biggest or scariest creatures; just think back to the time of the dinosaurs! 😱 Wow, I sometimes wonder how did we come this far? Well, I believe it’s our fight or flight response that has been our saviour.

My blog is taking you metaphorically down the rabbit hole, opening you to a whole new world of how we think, feel and operate at the deepest levels of ourselves. This blog will help you gain more understanding of your mind and for some of us, it will help to reduce the fears we have over our minds and what we store in them.

The first step in any change is to come clean with yourself and stop living with the excuses and denial.  I hear so many of these on a daily basis; “I will start tomorrow, I can’t do it, just the one, I lapsed so I just gave in, I am ok, I won’t do it again”. The list is endless, but I am sure we have all at one time or another said some of these things and convinced ourselves into thinking it’s ok to carry on.

We can all probably admit to having the odd obsession or two, I think this is normal and won’t have a massive impact on our lives. For example, if we have to have the certain thing in our home in symmetry or we have to do things in a particular way, maybe we like the tins all in order in our pantry, or the bed made just so, or we can’t relax until the kid’s toys are packed away. This can be a never-ending task with children, as soon as it's packed away, even if they haven’t used it in ages, they seem compelled to want them out again! Maybe we all have this need for the things we haven’t got, and spend our lives craving for those things, instead of enjoying what we have got.

The last blog on Superstition was looking at how superstitions can negatively impact our ability to be safe, secure and worry free. Today we are looking at rituals, which can develop from superstitions but can also be experienced on their own, even if you’re not superstitious. The word rituals can be seen as very religious in its meaning and also can be linked to witchcraft too, as many of our earliest rituals are imbedded in our ancient past. The word ritual means, 'a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions, performed according to a prescribed order'.

Most us have a few superstitions, but it doesn’t have a negative impact on our lives, but if we have let these habits get out of control, it can affect our anxiety levels and also stop us from being our true selves. The key to life is balance, not too much or too little; it can be a bit of a tightrope at times, but once we find ourselves and are true to ourselves, it’s easy. Superstitious behaviour links back to our ritualistic heritage, religions, and stereotyped behaviour patterns from the people we lived around.

Control is a confusing issue and for many of us we have got it in the wrong place in our head; if this is the case we can be causing ourselves lots of issues.  Lots of people say to me that they don’t like being out of control - this can be situational, like being on a plane or in a meeting, it can be future based, for example, "Will I get the job?" or "Will I have enough money?", and it can be personal, "Do I have cancer or some deadly illness?", "Can I be myself in this situation, will I feel ok, can I cope?"

Do you find yourself unable to sleep, as you are worrying about what’s been happening that day, or what’s coming tomorrow? Do you worry about the smallest things? Do you blow things out of proportion? Do you feel unable to concentrate and focus on things because you're anxious? Do you feel on edge if things don’t go as planned, teary and emotional from anxiety? Or do friends and family comment on how much you worry? If this sounds like you, maybe you are a serial worrier and you have let your worry habit spiral out of control.

This is the next part. You may understand now that the learnt habits of worrying is something we are in control of and not a big scary issue out of our control.  After decades of helping people to become anxiety free, one of the key factors is knowing that we can change and we don’t need to live this way forever. With your new-found knowledge, commitment to change and of course, like anything in life, a bit of work, you will start seeing a change in how you feel.

If a stray cat came to your house and you fed it, it would come back, and the more you feed it, the more it comes back. This is just like the habit of worrying, the more you worry about something, the more the worries grow and the more they will come back. If you keep feeding the cat, it will grow bigger and scarier, taking over your garden; this is the same thing that can happen with your worries. The pleasure is though, once you know this, you can start the process of change.  The simple answer is, if you don’t want the worries and the fears, don’t feed them, just like the cat; if you don’t feed it over time, it will go away.

This is exactly how a habit grows. It starts with just a small thing, like feeding the cat.

This is another one in the series about anxiety and how we can be doing things unknowingly that could be part of your anxiety issues.  Anxiety has a massive pull on our inner mind and can easily distort our perception of things. We can then start to find that we delude ourselves a little by maybe saying, "We’re not that bothered about going out or going on that trip" and we may say to ourselves "I think we will leave it.  We’re far too busy, we can’t commit to the time off work, we can’t afford it, we don’t really want to go," or whatever excuse we make and then we don’t go. 

We’ve all been around people that can elevate us, and then we can also have people that hinder our ability to be the best version of ourselves, just by the toxicity of the connections we have with them. We can often be afraid to speak up and confront those who produce toxic vibes, and this can then keep us in toxic relationships, friendships, or even jobs, due to this toxicity and how we can get trapped in the cycles it brings. The more we get upset and put down by these types of relationships, the more our inner confidence and self-esteem can be negatively affected by this. Some people are great at holding the illusion of being lovely, kind, and all-round nice and friendly, but on the inside, they are very different. These types of toxic relationships can be more subtle than the Mood Hoovers and Debbie Downers we have looked at already but can still have a massive impact on us. It's good to just notice how we feel about the people in our lives, and if they are impacting us, it’s time to look at who they are and of course how we are behaving too.

Often, we can get focused on everything else, but at times it is important to bring the focus back onto you. We have to always be real with ourselves and not let denial or any level of non-acknowledgement of what we are doing or not doing get in our way. We need to see things clearly and if we’re not sure, we can just stop and think of someone who isn’t suffering from our issues, and if they are not doing some of the things we find ourselves doing, then maybe we need to rethink this.  We need that confidence to grow so that we can help ourselves to be the best version of ourselves and liberate ourselves from the restraints of these horrible, unwanted, bad habits and issues. We can of course get help, but the best person to help you will be yourself, committing time to change and supporting this new positive lifestyle is essential.  

Life is like a game of tug of war, in most, if not all our relationships and interactions, we all have our own agenda and hopefully, we all strive to be fair too. Confidence is a learned and developed habit, with this being the case it is super important that we create the right lines in every area of our lives, and then we can just “hold the flag” over everyone we interact with.  But there is a fine line between give and take; one we need to uphold in balance for ourselves if we are striving to be more confident. Overgiving is just as bad for ourselves as undergiving is bad for others, neither way is the right way. If we overgive then it's a sign of weakness to our primeval minds and this will cause us to lack confidence. Our minds from the caveman days have all seen the importance of survival and that we need to protect and take care of ourselves to survive. Don’t get me wrong, giving selflessly is a great thing to do, but if this is something we do all the time at the expense of ourselves, then this will be too much to sustain over long periods. If we go on too long this way, we could run out of energy completely so then we are no help to others or ourselves, which is not a great place to end up.  The people we are helping wouldn't want us to break ourselves in the process of helping them, so it's about finding the balance between give and take.

Last week we looked at when anxiety is at its worst, how it can immobilise us, and how the freeze response takes over how we feel and often negatively impacts our nervous system as well. We used the analogy of the rabbit, which is one of the best creatures we know to use the freeze response to stay alive, and how we can’t just shake the rabbit awake. At this point, their nervous system is shut down and is far too afraid to do anything for the fear of dying. You might think that last statement is a bit dramatic, but this isn't the case, our nervous system is so powerful and is directly connected to our unconscious and primeval minds. The feelings it sends to our bodies are so strong and overwhelming that at times we can feel paralysed by them.  So, if we can’t shake the rabbit awake, what can we use as a carrot to entice them out of this frozen state? We know, in nature, that leaving the rabbit alone will be the only way to change this state of immobilisation, as with time, it will sense the danger is gone and bounce back to life. We can do this too with people frozen in fear, but for many of us wanting to help our loved ones and ourselves, we don’t just want to wait it out until our nervous system feels safe again.  

Anxiety is bad enough at any age in our lives, but when we should be living our lives to the full without the full pressures of adult life, it is, I feel, an even harder situation to go through. This week I had a young woman come in with her boyfriend, this young woman is an inspiration to us all. She has been battling with her childhood issues, and severe, demobilising, anxiety, for many years now. We have been having sessions for a few months now and making great progress, which is fabulous, and I know this will only continue to grow for her.  When we have anxiety at any age, we can often feel that people don’t understand what is happening inside us and that our actions will be misunderstood. We can often feel at our worst, that we can’t fully connect with our loved ones and the people around us and we feel unable to let them in. Also, we can feel that people may take our actions personally and that this is something they have done, rather than our anxiety and how we are struggling in that moment. If someone hasn’t experienced anxiety, how can we get them to understand how we are feeling inside? How can we explain what is happening inside at those moments? How can we get our loved ones to help us, when we can’t seem to even help ourselves?

In the last blog, we were looking at the British stiff upper lip, and how we, as British people, have grown up with this. Now we need to explore this line of truth we have with ourselves, and how if we don't have this, it can cause lots of anxiety within us. A client came into my office today and we were talking about this, and I was explaining how this can trigger an anxious outburst from our unconscious minds. For myself, I always look at what we do and how this impacts our unconscious mind. This being the case, it can at times cause us to feel confused about what we should or shouldn't be doing. This issue of our own internalised truth is very clear in our minds and we need to have this relationship with ourselves.                                                                                        

The difference between a lie and the truth can be a very fine line. It is even right or wrong, black or white, a truth or a lie. It's great to be open and authentic but we all know in certain situations we can't always be this way. This is because we need to be diplomatic and considerate of others' feelings. We also have to hold back from the full truth and tell those white lies. Life is like this, and that is perfectly fine. I think for everyone we have had to approach life in these ways many times over. We know at times, that sharing the truth and our true feelings, could cause an issue for ourselves, hurt others, jeopardise our relationships, our jobs, and our friendships. In the UK we have had what's called the British stiff upper lip. The phrase is most commonly heard as part of the idiom "keep a stiff upper lip", and has traditionally been used to describe an attribute of British people in remaining resolute and unemotional when faced with adversity.

I think it can be very hard to be our true unique selves, as historically this has not often been possible, and we’re maybe holding onto those old patterns and habits. For many of us, our parents couldn't be who they wanted to be, and beyond that, it got more and more difficult to be ourselves. We still had slavery in 1865 in the UK, plus in many parts of our western world too, and before 1967 it was a criminal offence to be gay in the UK.  Sadly, this is still illegal in parts of the world. A few years ago, Brunei brought back being stoned to death as a penalty for being caught being gay. Just over 100 years ago, women got the chance to vote and before that, they were classed as being the possession of the man. These are so close to who we are today on certain levels, yet also a million miles away from us.

Being safe and secure is the key to our deep, inner, confidence, which I believe is essential in helping you feel and live with confidence in all levels of your life. Our minds are amazing, and they are always trying to help us find ways to automate what we are doing, helping us to free up more mental inner space, which is fantastic for things like walking and driving a car, but if our mind starts automating things we don’t want, then we’re in trouble. With our inner minds working for us, it’s important to understand how it works, as sometimes we are inadvertently doing things which are not getting the outcome we are expecting. A massive thing for all of us can be procrastination and putting things off, which is such a limiter in moving forward, but you might not have been aware that it could also be causing anxiety, making the whole situation much worse. I do think one of the easiest things to do, is to put something off, which you might be saying is quite normal, and yes, you're right there. But there are big issues with this; for your inner mind, if there is a totally real and true reason to put something off then there is no problem at all and your mind will accept this, but if you are putting it off because you are uncomfortable or avoidant about doing this, then your mind won’t believe your excuse.

From the stone age to the 1950’s, all over the world we lived in fear of a neighbour or another country invading our homes, villages, or territory. Slaughtering our friends, family, and community, to take over and occupy our land and resources, or if they didn’t slaughter us, they brought health epidemics which did it for them. We are also over the era of being helpless beings in our powerful, world, out of control with the force of nature. Of course, we do see many disasters and devastation caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, and extreme weather conditions - being caught up in those must be terrifying for anyone.  But over the last 100 years, we have learnt so much and we can now build houses to withstand earthquakes and even install earthquake protection beds; google them, they look amazing. We can now predict the weather, and send support to help when a disaster happens, to help minimise the loss of life.

I was reflecting on life the other day while looking through some of my old photographs and some of the things I used to do when I was younger. I must say at this point that I am making myself feel very old now!! But I think for many of us we can see how much our world is changing. Some things we don't even realise weren't always the way it is now. But for parts of our mind, we struggle with changing this quickly. This is because a big part of our unconscious mind is primeval, and this part of our mind won't change easily because it fears change. You might be thinking, why would I mind being this way? Well, the reason for this is that this part of us feels if we are still alive then why change anything? This part of your mind bases everything on life and death, it is the most stubborn part of your mind. This can often be the way we can struggle to make changes and accept that things have changed too. We know that as we get older, changing can seem more difficult as well. This is because we have had more time to hold onto those old habits and they can then seem harder to break.  

Life, I think, can have many ups and downs for everyone. This can be hard at times to cope with. We must try and deal with things in the best possible way that we can, by not feeding these low feelings. This is not to say that we should avoid them either but that we should try not to catastrophise what is happening at the moment and do our best to deal with things head-on. This might sound sensible but for some of us, we can find it very hard to do. This is because our minds can be very protective and defensive to how we deal with challenges in life.

We have been looking at ways to help us reduce our fear levels even when life can be a challenge to us. This is a key thing, not only in helping our fear, but also in keeping our levels of anxiety in a stable and low place.  If we spend lots of time with those worries and what-if's, we will be creating lots of inner fear and anxiety, if it is left unchecked it can run riot within us.  A good plan is to stop this before it starts, if it's just at the beginning of starting to ruminate about things, then the anxiety levels will still be at a low level, and it is much easier to break from the pattern of worry at this point. But if we have let this get out of hand, then it can have become something that will be much bigger and so in turn, much harder to switch our mindsets out of. Our minds are amazing and are constantly supporting us, but if we send these worrying messages into our minds then our minds will listen. When our minds listen to these worries and fears they don't just do nothing, they start the process of protecting us and the more we worry, the bigger the protection becomes. This is the fight-flight and freeze response, which has made us the most overpopulated species on the planet and keeps us safe in dangerous situations. But if we are overthinking and worrying about something then our minds won't realise that this isn't a real-life danger and will start acting as if it is.

We have been looking at the fear response, which we are quite aware is something that can be heavily based in our unconscious and primeval minds. This is because it is part of the fight, flight, and freeze response, which is very important for us to have, as it helps us deal with real-life dangers. This helps us to stay safe, by our inner minds alerting us to any dangers in that milli second when our mind gets triggered into this response system. We have to accept that without hard work or by having hypnotherapy and EMDR approaches, that these triggers can be quite stubborn in stopping them. But what we are in control of are all the things we can do when we have fear.

According to psychology research, fear is a primal emotion that involves a universal biochemical response and a high individual emotional response. Fear involves a wide range of both physical and emotional symptoms and our fear response is different to everyone else's.

I think we can enjoy life more if we do the things we need to as quickly as we can. If we have lots to do then it not only feels like a weight on us but it can negatively impact our mental health and anxiety levels. You might be thinking why is this the case? It is because our minds can get overwhelmed when too many things need to be done. Even if they are small things, they can still trigger anxiety for some people. I think it is important that we have strategies to help us get things done without the stress that can come and without getting overwhelmed.  For me, I have a head like a sieve and so I need to have a list of things that need to get done. I like to keep things in my diary so I can have them on repeat until I have found the time to do them. I find this works for me, when I log into the diary it can trigger me to remember that I have these things to do. I often add them into any spaces I have in my work diary and then I often get them done in the gaps through the day. But this might not work for you, it is all about finding the best way that suits you and your mindset.  

Setting goals is a great way to help us move our lives forward, also it is great for us to be the best version of ourselves as well. I think life can really fly by, days become weeks and weeks become months and years. This is fine as long as we don't end up with regrets and we find we are looking back on our lives wishing we could have done more. We do live in a fast-paced life, and this can mean we feel that there isn't enough time to do anything extra. But sometimes there is a bit of room that can make all the difference to you over the long term, but small enough to fit this time into your life. I live a busy life but have decided to learn Spanish, the second time around. I have committed to 15 minutes a day which you might think isn't enough at all but over time it is much more than what you think, it works out to be 1,368 hours a year now, which sounds like lots.  When I think about my same daily time commitment, I now look at it in the bigger picture and think that amount of time will make a difference. If I don't think of the daily picture, I might start thinking, “What is the point? It won't change anything to not do it”, and before you know it, I’m out of the habit and my goals are left behind.

Over thirty years ago I spent nearly two years backpacking around the world, this time in my life was the freest I have ever been. This I think was because of many factors, and it is very hard to create the same freedom I felt in the commercialised world that the UK is. Also, I think that having less belongings, in fact hardly anything, just a backpack, was liberating. With having no fixed abode, the pressure of money is massively reduced and the basic principles of just food and shelter felt easier than all the struggles we have of money in our lives in the UK. Finally, I feel that the lifestyle while travelling was one spent outdoors and that is such a freeing experience not being constrained by being indoors all the time. I do feel that if we work on taking some of these principles on in our lives, we can feel the freedom of living our lives more simply.